Tuesday, June 5, 2012

alpenrose heartbreaker

It was a heartbreaker... As a newly minted Cat 2 I thought it was high time to gain some experience on another track; the home track being Marymoor. Alpenrose is a different deal, a much shorter track with much steeper banking.
So this last weekend I hauled the kids down to Vancouver WA to hang out with their grandparents and give the wife some peace and quiet. The grandparents were nice enough to come out and supervise the kids while I raced.
I felt totally out of my element on this track- the short steep turns just about made me dizzy. I was out of sync with the other riders. They would jump fast and hard and almost instantly get 20 meters on me, I would claw my way back in time to have to have about 10 seconds rest, then someone else would attack again, instantly lose 20 meters again, repeat for 100 laps... I was strictly in survival mode, clinging to the back of the pack for dear life the whole time. It didn't help that being out of sync with the race like this made it so that I wasn't even on a wheel most of the time. Not a very efficient way of "racing". Maybe having an off day and racing against some animals like Steven Beardsley had something to do with it too. If nothing else it was a good learning experience.